Yet More New Deal and the Great Depression Blogging
PGL at Angry Bear receives an email from David Gross:
Angry Bear: Update: Daniel Gross reads my comment on what Bryan Caplan wrote and emails me this:
Is the sheer a-historicity of it. Roosevelt scared investors and businessmen? Did he scare them as much as, oh, Stalin, who controlled one of the world's largest economies and was expanding his influence? or as much as Mussolini? Or as much as the fascist government of Japan? Or as much as Hitler, who was buys confiscating property of Jewish investors and businessmen? On a comparative basis, the U.S. was certainly the country in the 1930s that was the most hospitable to private investment and capital formation. Economic history unfolds in real history, not in some imagined world. The New Deal was a success if only because it kept the U.S. from sliding into the type of horrific fascism that infected half of Europe and the pathetic weakness that affected the other half.
As we noted, investment demand increased substantially from 1932 to 1937. Daniel Gross mocks the idea that FDR scared investors -- at least relative to the fear investors may have had seeing what was going on in Germany, Italy, Japan, and/or Russia.
